Monday, 16 February 2009

Ending Universal Suffrage

Conservative positions in the political opinion polls are consistent. Considered within the context of a general election held at some point between now and June 2010, analysts agree that Brown will lead the Labour party into the next election, and lead it to a much worse defeat than any other Leader. It is argued, too, that internal Labour substitution of yet another prime minister on the strength of Blair's majority would be unacceptable; not least because circumstances are now so remote from those of 2005 that only a general election can offer choice between manifestos.

Yet Blair's assertion that New Labour is nothing less than the political arm of the British people should not be forgotten or dismissed. A central tenet of the New Labour project is that power should remain permanently within the coalition that makes up the Party; that challenges to the policies of the Leader and Executive should be expressed within the Party when policies fail or become too unpopular in the country. It is this position that validated the parachuting of Brown and his faction into the government of the United Kingdom without any consultation by ballot of either Party or country.

It is a mark of the regime holding power in our country that it is impervious to all and any revelation or event confirming the seamless incompetence veined with corruption that is its principle characteristic. Mass unemployment, the collapse of sterling, bank nationalisation preceded by insolvencies, grotesque levels of public and private debt, and individual corrupt practices by members of the legislature and government appointees; the stripping of power from the Parliament and the destruction of the rule of law together with citizens' liberties; illegal wars and torture; the destruction of the education system and of individual self -respect through the imposition of means-tested mass welfare with its accompanying moral hazard and social corrosiveness. Any of this should have brought a government to its knees, and to the polls.

Yet it has not. A major reason it has not is the settled, primary acceptance that there should be no polls in the form that once was used under a Constitution that has been altered whenever New Labour chose, and as grossly as was required for their purposes. The Parliament Acts are quite as vulnerable as habeas corpus (to mention just one of the pieces of constitutional vandalism we have suffered).

The experience of an election can be produced by the choosing of a replacement for Brown, if he can be ousted by other Labour factions. The ousting will, of itself, provide some feeling that necessary change has been effected. The choosing will not be extended to those who do not belong to or support the Party of course. The Labour party rules state that in the event of a Leader becoming permanently unavailable (which offers particularly face-saving ill health) while the Party is in power, then the cabinet will choose a new prime minister to serve until party elections can take place. The Labour party's electoral practice is grossly undemocratic, with its electoral colleges wielding differently weighted votes, quite apart from having a tiny electorate in comparison with the electorate in the country at large. Furthermore constitutional changes within the Party under New Labour have insulated the ruling elite from any pressures coming from the 'mass' Party. Just as we watch the state claw powers from independent institutions to itself, so we are watching the insulated New Labour Executive identify itself with the state and its powers.

The New Labour regime has fifteen months before its last perfidy, the destruction of universal suffrage, must be put into effect, and face the anger this will cause when it is fully understood. It is well prepared. It has instituted all the civil control mechanisms that will be needed and will have the advantage of causing all opposition to be, by definition, illegal. The petty discourtesies persisted in by their current Leader towards the extra-Party opposition, through to the abuses of constitutional practice already taking place in denying information and consultation to Opposition parties, are nasty confirmation that we live in a post-democratic state.